Chapter 2020

“There comes a time when the business asks you to scale up or scale down,” Mary Cleaver said as we met on the porch of the kitchen looking out on the farm fields. Mary was telling us her story about being a successful food entrepreneur in New York and when she said that, I knew that that is exactly what my business was asking of me. Three years ago, the business asked me to scale up. With the expansion of Roots to River Farm to a second property in Titusville NJ, I went on a three-year adventure. With the help of many amazing people, I operated a small farm on two leased properties about twenty minutes apart from each other. We partnered with The Farm Cooking School, Locust Light Farm and The Barn at Gravity Hill to steward the Gravity Hill property and it was an intense and rewarding experience. We created an amazing community, operated a successful weekend farm market, we employed many wonderful people, grew fifteen acres of organic vegetables and flowers for our community, stewarded two pieces of land organically, connected with our amazing customers and CSA members, made wonderful business partnerships and ate really well.

We also encountered many challenges. We were hit with two of the wettest seasons on record and a storm of broken trucks and tractors. We were constantly having to create and adapt new systems to make the two properties work efficiently as one farm and we worked long long hours.

As this season ended it was time to re-evaluate our answer. It was time to scale down the farm.

As we move forward to the next chapter of Roots to River Farm, we invite you to join us. We will be operating on our original property in Solebury, Pennsylvania. We will still be growing the amazing organic veggies you have come to know and expect. We are focusing our growing efforts and offering a limited amount customizable boxed shares to be delivered to convenient pickup sites in our area and we invite you to check out the options here on our website. Our CSA members will be able to choose exactly what they want from the farm delivered to a spot near them. Check out CSA info here.

We will miss the joyful bustling energy of the weekend market and the beauty of Gravity Hill, but we have new projects in the works that and we are excited to keep you updated via email.

The Farm Cooking School and Locust Light Farm will continue to operate at Gravity Hill, so please check out their websites for class and event info.

The farm at Gravity Hill is also entering a new chapter partnering with Rolling Harvest Food Rescue (www.rollingharvest.com) to grow food for donation with opportunities for the community to volunteer on the farm to help their neighbors in need. For volunteer opportunities please be in touch with Rolling Harvest and for farm-based education programs, please contact TheBarnatGravityHill.com.

In addition, Fairground Farm based in Hopewell, NJ,  will farm land at Gravity Hill for their vegetable operation and donate a percentage to Rolling Harvest Food Rescue.